CPU upgrade, is it worth it?

Hi

Would I see a noticeable VR performance by changing CPU. I'm using the Rift with the wire.

Currently using an Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790k (4.0GHz), 32 gb Ram, GTX 1070 Ti

I'd upgrade CPU, ram and mother board, but keep SSDrives and graphics card.

But would upgrading the processor and Ram make a large difference?

Cheers

I would say yes at that stock clock speed. Somewhere around 15% at a guess. Need to test it tho.

I would overclock water cool / AIO that chip, then at a guess it would be negligible, perhaps 5% with that GPU. I would do a few test and learn a bit about overclocking.

Yes, I just upgraded from a I7-7700 @4mhz and saw about a 15% improvement. Don't expect the world though. I get a solid 45fps if not around cities or AI units. if low in Dubai or Las Vegas or around AI units FPS drops into the mid to upper 30's and there is some stuttering when looking to the sides.

I can tell you soon what a 3800X with a 5700XT 16GB 3200MHz can do in DCS, got the parts in the mail, couple days and I will test DCS on it, tho my friend who bought the stuff is not a DCS player he said, "Xeah, let's see what it brings with YOUR flight game" haha

He has a 4790k and a toasted 760GTX, so he went all in and bought it all new.

Thanks, I'm not sure if the best part of £800 would be worth it.

Timcat; are they high settings in VR, currently I need everything as low as it will go.

Thanks, I'm not sure if the best part of £800 would be worth it.

 

Timcat; are they high settings in VR, currently I need everything as low as it will go.

Best option for your 4790 would be a good overclock.

I've recently upgraded from i7 3770K overklocked to 4.7Ghz, 16gb ram and GTX1080 to 9900KS, 32Gb 3200mhz RAM, GTX2080ti 11Gb.

With the same settings in DCS I got somewhere around 15%(guesstimated) more of the time with 90FPS instead of 45FPS. The old hardware almost never got under 45FPS, and with the new and same settings, I newer saw it stutter.

Event if the new CPU is some kind of rocket, it only differs 10% in Clock to 5.1/5.2Ghz. I guess the 9900KS is slightly faster per clock but in real DCS gaming, I still could see the single CPU core getting very high load. Maybe average 10-15% lower load, and with the same setting barely keeping below 100% at the worst case scenarios.

I dont think you should count on very big gains for the CPU only.

I saw better performance but I wasnt the CPU only that gave me these. I do otker stuff than DCS, other games and also workstation so the 9900KS was clearly motivated from that( and also, I hade the Money to spare anyway).

If you get yourself a descent overclock, maybe better cooling to cope with the heat and put the rest of the money you can spare on a new videocard, I think you'll get the best bang for the buck.

RAM-speed, do not show big differences in gaming. There is a difference but not very big numbers. For RAM yore sitting on, if not very slow it may expensive per gain in FPS. There is a good thread on this forum with tests of different CPU Clock, RAM Clock etc. Id say, when anyhow buing RAM you can put some extra cash in for speed but upgrading same type of RAM to faster is expensive.

I also think there is a lot of people around having RAM modules with XMP-profiles but not running the XMP-profile activated in the mainboard BIOS. Do you have that knowledge about your current RAM and settings ?

Forgot to tell that I actually was able to run DCS with my i7 at 4.9ghz, and with that speed there would be a very small difference to the i9 9900KS@5ghz in DCS. Because of this, if DCS was the only thing, a change of CPU could'nt be motivated.

My computer is also used by my wife and being away I didnt dare to leave home with the 4.9ghz setting(fear of angry wife due to not working PC), thus making me set it at a guaranted safe overclock.

I guess the i7 4690 should be good for at least 4.7 or 4.8ghz.

From memory: All textures high, Water high, Traffic low, no smoke, Trees 80%, Clutter 30%, Cockpit 512, No shadows, MSAA 2, PD 1.2 Steam VR SS 100%. I cap at 45 fps because I have motion vector re-projection turned on in steam.

Thanks for all the information, I'll take a look at overclocking, what Can go wrong!

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I can tell you soon what a 3800X with a 5700XT 16GB 3200MHz can do in DCS, got the parts in the mail, couple days and I will test DCS on it, tho my friend who bought the stuff is not a DCS player he said, "Xeah, let's see what it brings with YOUR flight game" haha

 

He has a 4790k and a toasted 760GTX, so he went all in and bought it all new.

BitMaster, do you think it would be possible to cross-test the new GPU in the old computer vs the full-new setup?

I have one generation older CPU than your buddy, but have a feeling upgrading GPU should bring the most boost and upgrading CPU (no overclocking involved) would be just minor gain for our sims.

Timcat, were those settings in Multiplayer? I'm not too far off those in single offline play.

Cheers

Got the processor running at 4.6 so thanks very much.

BitMaster, do you think it would be possible to cross-test the new GPU in the old computer vs the full-new setup?

 

I have one generation older CPU than your buddy, but have a feeling upgrading GPU should bring the most boost and upgrading CPU (no overclocking involved) would be just minor gain for our sims.

Good idea indeed !

Will see, it's more a time issue than not wanting to

Single player

Thanks, I'm very similar. I'm up to 4.7 now and I'm amazed the difference it's made and how simple it was.

I'm looking at overclocking the gpu now. I probably shouldn't as it runs so well now.

What's great as I nearly spent all that money!

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Yes, I just upgraded from a I7-7700 @4mhz and saw about a 15% improvement. Don't expect the world though. I get a solid 45fps if not around cities or AI units. if low in Dubai or Las Vegas or around AI units FPS drops into the mid to upper 30's and there is some stuttering when looking to the sides.

Thanks for that information.

I've just put together a similar system after the MoBo died (Asus PT6se, i7 965 24GB RAM) on my last PC build, just waiting for the ROG RTX 2080 super arriving next week but specs are i9 9900k, ROG Maximus xi Hero, 64GB Corsair 3000 RAM, M.2 NVMe Samsung 970 1TB (2 of them), H80i V2 AIO, and the 2 EVO 850/860 500GB SSDs from my last PC as additional storage.

Just now I'm still using the GTX760 from the last PC but it really does hold things back :)

That system looks great but that cooler is a waste of time and money tbh. It's FAR too small for that CPU, even non-overclocked.

Either opt for a decent air cooler or get a 2x120mm or better 2x140mm AIO.

Check some reviews to find out what I mean.

That system looks great but that cooler is a waste of time and money tbh. It's FAR too small for that CPU, even non-overclocked.

 

Either opt for a decent air cooler or get a 2x120mm or better 2x140mm AIO.

 

Check some reviews to find out what I mean.

At the moment it is handling it just fine, it was the cooler from the i7 965 as it was all that would fit in my old case and even then with the case/MoBo layout I could only fit one fan to the radiator, and it struggled to keep the i7 965 cool.

In the Phanteks P400a DRGB case with the above system, I have the two fans on it and running at 4.9GHz it gets up to around 36.9c (running Star Citizen for about 1.5 hours), at idle it is sitting 24c to 26c with the fans set to quiet. So far I have been quite surprised at how well it is holding up. But I do take your point, and there is plenty of room in the case to put a larger cooler in to it.

Thanks, I'm very similar. I'm up to 4.7 now and I'm amazed the difference it's made and how simple it was.

I'm looking at overclocking the gpu now. I probably shouldn't as it runs so well now.

 

What's great as I nearly spent all that money!

 

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Very nice to read :-)

You can use a graphic card vendors OC-tool for overclocking the GPU. There is other than Asus oc-tool but its the only Ive used( having had Asus cards).

They do mild overclocks and has a feature like auto overclock. It tests the card for around 10minutes, the än its done. I think Ive usually get in the ball park of 10% OC. I guess its possible to get higher clocks by increasing cooling and manually clock it, but this is a quick way to a bit more performance.

Like Bit alluded to if you overclock the 9900K above stock clocks it can put out A LOT of heat. Good paste and good cooler will make a difference. I've seen it draw 200w + during benchmarks even though the TDP is listed at 95w. TDP is more of a guideline for the minimum cooler and not indicative of how much current it can actually draw.

Most of the overclocking videos and guides focus on OCing all the cores which is really not necessary for DCS. All core OC is mainly for rendering. You can just OC 2 cores and you'll get higher clocks with less voltage and less heat and still be stable.

Prime 95 is the gold standard for stability testing but I don't feel it's necessary for DCS and typical gaming use cases. It's more if you want to render something overnight. It really pushes your CPU with heavy AVX workloads that rendering software uses. I'm not aware of any game that uses the AVX instruction set. There's usually an AVX offset in BIOS to lower your clock for that kind of software to maintain stability.

I've played DCS for hours with no issue on an overclock that will crash Cinebench and the CPU-Z stress tests.

I'm running my pc without side panels now. I've bought a couple of fans for later if I want to put the side panels back on.

Do you have any info on upping the 2 core overclock? I've had a look at the Internet, but there are so many different opinions out there I'm a little confused.

Tried overclocking gpu with little success. Pc OK but dcs crashed after a couple of hours.

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What brand of the videocard?

How did you OC the GPU?

Ive used this one on three different (asus) card without any problem at all.

I think there is a more fancy one from a different vendor, nor used but read of.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/Graphic%20Card/Unique_Applications/GPUTweakII-Version2132.zip

What he ^ said.

I usually use Afterburner even though EVGA cards have their own OC/fan curve software. They both have an autotune that will set the voltage curve for you. You can check in the overclock.com forum for your card and get an idea of what clock/memory are typical for the 1070 Ti. Sometimes the stock boost clock is about all you'll get if it's tuned for the fans and heatsink that comes with the card.

And for CPU it's called the 2 core ratio in your BIOS versus all core synced or something to that effect depending on vendor. And then you can leave the other cores at a lower frequency multiplier of the base clock. And the Turbo boost feature will boost those 2 cores that DCS uses and leave the others alone.

Make sure you have adequate power supply as well before you get too crazy with overclocking. It will have to transform a lot more current. Double check if things seem hot around the connections or if the cables are getting hot. The voltage drop can cause instability as well.

I blew a cheap power supply that I was running too many GPUs off of for a miner a couple years ago.

MSI Afterburner, yes...thats the one Ive read a lot good about.

Overclockers.com:

https://www.overclockers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php/86-nVidia-GPUs

Overclocker.net:

https://www.overclock.net/forum/69-nvidia/

Some tuning tips and guides, here for RTX2080ti, but just use the same site and find your card:

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/asus-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-rog-strix-preview,28.html

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?105931-ROG-Strix-RTX-2080-Overclocking-Guide

A good videocard overclock usually gives somewhere around 10% more performance(without going crazy and getting watercooling etc). In a lot of cases a overclocked card is close to the next level of videocard(when next level running at stock clock).

Its therefore a very good idea when playing DCS which is hard on the CPU and GPU. I just got the fastest card around and still overclock it to get the best combination of smooth gaming and good picture quality.

That system looks great but that cooler is a waste of time and money tbh. It's FAR too small for that CPU, even non-overclocked.

 

Either opt for a decent air cooler or get a 2x120mm or better 2x140mm AIO.

 

Check some reviews to find out what I mean.

Thought I would put some stress on the CPU using the inbuilt stress test in CPU-Z just to see how the H80i V2 AIO would cope with it.

Max temp was a peak of 66°c it was holding 63°C before and after that peak, a bit warmer than I would like but still well within the CPUs limits

I did check out some reviews before I bought the H80i V2 it was the best cooler I could get that would fit in my small case, I have read various other reviews of Corsair AIOs and even the larger H110, H150 did not come out as good as the H80i. I did have the older H80 before but the pump failed after a year or so of use on the i7 965.

Some screen shots from the hours worth of stress:

First is the idle before starting the test, and the other 2 are after an hour's stress.